Literature Review On Placebo Effect

Literature Review

In this section of the paper I shall look at a) defining the meaning of a placebo, the placebo effect and the nocebo effect, b) explaining the subject-expectancy effect, the conditioning effect and the nocebo effect, c) understanding how the placebo effect works, d) discovering the effectiveness of the use of placebos

2.1 What is a placebo and what is the placebo effect?

With various definitions put forward by dictionaries, medical websites and doctors, a placebo is not easily defined. From Latin, the word placebo means “I shall please” and was first used in a medical context around the 18th century, where it was defined as “a medicine given more to please than to benefit the patient.” Thus, the placebo effect is a healing

In 2002, a study conducted at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute involved treating two groups of patients with experimental antidepressants, whilst the third group was administered a placebo. Their aim was to discover whether the effects of antidepressants could be detected rapidly in the brain’s electrical activity, using the placebo group as a control group. They did not however, expect the control group to experience a therapeutic effect. The psychiatry professor at UCLA who led the study, Dr Andrew Leuchter, remarked that it was “quite a surprise” and that he could see “significant changes in brain functions”, and the patients had related symptom decrease over time. Both the patients who had taken the antidepressants and the placebo showed a considerable difference in the prefrontal region of the brain. The scientists found that there was suppressed activity in the respective area in patients who had been administered the antidepressants, whilst there was an increase for those who had been given a placebo. Therefore, this suggests that the brain responds differently to a drug and a placebo. One important thing to note though, was that once the placebo responders were told that they were being treated with a placebo, they had a deterioration of their mood, with some resulting in the need to take medication. This corresponds to the long-established view of the placebo effect, that it

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